“… This is a great place to live in, Luis, but one must be strong to live here — and practical; one must know how to deal with the weakness in oneself as with those in others.”
Luis bowed, as if in thought, and his gaze wandered to the fine polished planks of narra that made up the floor — long, wide, and shiny, the grain pulsing through. It was almost impossible to get this kind of wood now, for the big trees that once stood in this part of the country had been cut down. Indeed, this house, though a replica of what was burned, was the handiwork of his forebears, the Asperris. It could well be the vaulting monument of their perseverance and their cunning. He knew the story by rote, as his own people in Sipnget had told him — how the Americans came with their transits and their measuring rods, how the Spaniards worked with the Americans, and how with no more than scraps of paper they made binding and permanent the bondage of those who had from the beginning felled the trees, cut the grass, killed the snakes, and dammed the creeks, so that this inhospitable land could be made gracious and fecund.
History is written by the strong? Where had he read that before? Was it Vic, his half-brother, who had quoted it to him, or one of his radical friends in the university? Again the old anger was brought to life and with it the sense of futility that he could do nothing, nothing, for it was not in him to do battle with the wind, not with his puny body, not with his shallow intellect, least of all with his poetry. He cringed again at having to listen to his father’s fears, his expectations, and he listened to the old man as one would hearken to a knell.
“I will go as most men must go, but I want honesty between us. You are my son, my blood is in your veins, my sinews …”
I am your son but also my mother’s. Luis turned over the silent reply; the land that you ravaged has claim on me, too, and not just your ancestors from a distant and rocky peninsula.
“And I want my blood and my life to go on when this mortal frame is no more. I want you, Luis, to marry and have an heir before I go. I want you to look again at your cousin. It is important that this land, this wealth, should not leave the Asperris. It should not go to these tenants who do not understand what it is to carve something out of nothing, who have no pride in their families, in their race. They are treacherous, they are ingrates — they killed my brother, don’t ever forget that.”
The old man was angry; he was also afraid. Luis could understand it better now — the civilian guards, the patrols, and checkpoints. The Army was never there to protect the poor — it had always been an institution for the preservation of privilege.
“I know, Father,” he said, “but if they do want to kill you or me, do you think your civilian guards—”
“Our civilian guards, Luis. Our civilian guards.”
“Would the Army be able to defend you? This is not the best defense, Father; it has never been—”
“You have the traditional loathing and distrust of the intellectual for anyone who carries a sword. You have been mesmerized by that old saying, the pen is mightier than the sword. Did it ever occur to you that it was, perhaps, a poet who coined it? People believe it but it is nonsense. The man with the gun is the state, and the state is everything. Can there be progress without order? Without the state and its stability, you have to go back to the jungle …”
“This is the jungle, Father,” Luis said, surprised that he could now openly contradict his father. “It has always been thus.”
“And the predators are people like me?” Don Vicente shook his head ruefully. “And what are you?” he asked. “Will you be the savior of the oppressed and the weak? My son, there are no oppressors, there are no oppressed. There are only people who seize opportunities to make their lives better. The poor are virtuous? The worst enemies of the poor are their own kind — because they are lazy, because they refuse to change.”
“It is we who refuse to change, Father,” Luis said. “We have grown used to our comforts, to habits of the past.”
Don Vicente’s voice lifted. “But I have changed, Luis, not just in the flesh. I am no longer the youth who loitered in Europe, who lived lavishly in Manila and loathed every moment I spent in this town. My views — they have changed as well. You don’t have to tell me that everything springs from the land and what we have gotten from it must be returned.”
Did his father finally believe in justice, then? Or was he again indulging in rhetoric?
Another uneasy silence, then Don Vicente thrust his chin to the door. The interview had come to an end.
The sun-flooded hall was blinding after his stay in the old man’s darkened room. In his own room, near the end of the hall, the floor appeared newly waxed and the bed smelled clean, the sheets freshly starched. Beside his bed his suitcases were lined up, and he unpacked them, arranged his clothes in the tall aparador in the corner. He walked to the azotea and sat on the stone ledge. The faint rustling in the eaves and the sonorous chug-chug of the rice mill behind the house came to him. The brown fields lay beyond the walls of timeless adobe; so, too, did the river dike and the brown dots of buri palms far away.
Trining came out of her room and joined him. He did not notice her until she sat by his side, their arms touching. He turned to her and saw that she had changed from the brown starched uniform she had worn on the trip. It was sloppy and had given her no identity. Now she wore a yellow silk dress that accentuated the soft lines of her young body blossoming into womanhood.
“You seem to know everything — just about all the wrong things to tell him,” Luis said petulantly.
Trining looked at him incredulously. “But he knows, Luis — everything — even without my telling him. Do you think Tio is a fool even if he sits in that room all day? He wrote to me about your quitting school. He knows you quarreled with your father rector. Prerogatives — was that what you called it?”
Luis did not answer.
“Besides, it is true. You didn’t visit me often enough. I would have seen more of you if only you tried. I am really proud of you, Luis. Just ask my classmates what I always tell them. Why, they say”—she paused and blushed—“I am in love with you. It was very embarrassing for me to appear to like you so much, and you never came as often as I wanted you to — and when you did, you didn’t want to take me out.”
“You talk too much,” he said, dismissing her prattle, walking away from her. He went to the bedroom and flung himself on his bed. The sheets were fresh and cool. Above, from the ceiling, as in all other rooms of the house, dangled a small pink chandelier, and it tinkled as a slight breeze from the open azotea door flowed in.
Trining followed him and sat on the edge of his bed. “Well, if you don’t like me, at least you could have been sociable with my friends. Ester, for instance — she is your publisher’s daughter, and when we came to your office you didn’t even notice her. Then at that party at the Cielito Lindo — I had begged you to take me there. Who will take me, Luis? My friends think you are a snob. I had to explain that you are not.”
“I am sorry,” he said, pressing her hand.
Trining stood up and walked to the door. “Do you want to walk with me around the town?”
“What is there to see?”
“They will see us,” she said, smiling. “Four years you’ve been away. The people would like to see the difference—”
“No,” he said brusquely.
“I’ll call when supper is ready,” she said. The door closed, and he heard her soft humming as she padded down the hall.